The National Transportation Safety Board announced on Tuesday a number of recommendations to address a “serious safety risk” in the wake of January’s midair collision over Washington, D.C., that killed dozens of people.
The collision between a military helicopter and an American Airlines plane left 67 people dead. It was the first major commercial airline crash in the United States since 2009. The American Airlines flight, which was coming from Wichita, Kansas, was preparing to land at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport when it was struck by an Army Black Hawk helicopter on a training mission. Both fell into the Potomac River after the collision.
NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy began a news conference Tuesday with an urgent recommendation to ban helicopter operations on a specific route near the airport when runways 15 and 33 are in use. When helicopters are flying that route at the maximum authorized altitude of 200 feet, they may have just 75 feet of vertical separation from an airplane on landing approach to runway 33.
Homendy said she and other NTSB members determined that posed an “intolerable risk to aviation safety.” The vertical separation could be even less, depending on the helicopter’s lateral distance from the Potomac River shoreline or if an approaching airplane was below its designated visual glidepath, Homendy said.
The route is currently banned under an order from Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, but only through March 31, and the NTSB wants it extended permanently.
“As that deadline nears we remain concerned about the significant potential for future midair collision at DCA, which is why we are recommending a permanent solution today,” Homendy said.
Homendy said that the NTSB is also recommending that the Federal Aviation Administration designate an alternative helicopter route that can be used when those runways are in use. She said the NTSB will not prescribe a particular route.
Homendy said the NTSB developed the recommendations after looking at nearly 15 years’ worth of incidents at DCA. Between 2011 and 2024, at least one traffic alert and collision avoidance system was triggered per month due to the proximity of a helicopter to a plane, Homendy said. In over half of the reviewed encounters, the helicopters may have been above the route altitude restriction of 200 feet, Homendy said. The Black Hawk helicopter in the January crash was above the altitude restriction. About two-thirds of the events occurred at night.
Between October 2021 and December 2024, there were 15,214 close proximity events between commercial airplanes and helicopters, where there was lateral separation of less than one nautical mile, or around 6,000 feet, and vertical separation of less than 400 feet. There were 85 events that involved a lateral separation of less than 1,500 feet and vertical separation of less than 200 feet, Homendy said.
Homendy said the NTSB’s preliminary report will include information about the crew of both aircraft and the history of the flights, much of which has already been made public. Full NTSB investigations typically take at least a year.
“I often say that the easiest and quickest part of the investigation is determining what happened,” Homendy said. “The part that takes longer is the how and why.”
Federal investigators have been working to piece together the events that led to the crash. Investigator in charge Brice Banning previously described it as “a complex investigation” with “a lot of pieces” that NTSB members were working to gather.
Wreckage from the plane and helicopter has been recovered. Investigators also recovered black boxes from both aircraft. Black boxes record flight data, including altitude and speed, as well as audio from the flight.
Investigators said in mid-February that it’s possible the helicopter crew did not hear instructions from an air traffic controller to pass behind the plane. Seventeen seconds before the collision, a radio transmission from the air traffic control tower directed the helicopter to pass behind the airliner, but because the helicopter’s microphone key was pressed down during part of the transmission, they may have not heard the words “pass behind the,” NTSB chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said.
The NTSB has determined that the collision likely occurred at an altitude of about 325 feet, which would have put the Black Hawk above its 200-foot limit for the area. Cockpit conversations from a few minutes before the crash indicate conflicting altitude data. The type of Black Hawk helicopter involved in the crash typically has two systems for measuring altitude, which may explain the discrepancy.
Investigators believe that the helicopter crew, who the Army has described as highly experienced, were wearing night-vision goggles at the time of the incident.
